Tuesday, April 1, 2008 : 1:20 p.m.

Real-time Monitoring to Improve Ground-water Management

Wesley R. Danskin, U.S. Geological Survey and Robert L. Reiter, San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District

Advances in real-time monitoring of ground-water systems have improved the ability of local water managers to make timely decisions regarding recharge and pumpage. In the San Bernardino area of southern California, fluctuating ground-water levels have prompted significant concerns. Ground water rising too high in the silt and sand aquifer flooded basements in the 1980s and damaged concrete-lined flood-control channels. High ground-water levels also may cause liquefaction during a major earthquake. Ground water falling too low caused land subsidence in the 1960s. The goal of present water managers is to avoid these expensive problems. To improve knowledge of the local aquifer and to provide managers with real-time ground-water levels, ten cluster well sites were installed throughout the aquifer and equipped with automatic monitoring equipment. Each well site consists of three to six individual wells installed to different depths and protected in a concrete utility vault. Each well is equipped with a pressure transducer to monitor changes in ground-water levels. Each well site is equipped with a data logger to collect and store data from the transducers, a solar panel to recharge batteries, and a data-collection platform and an antenna to transmit the ground-water-level data via satellite to a centralized national database. The data then are loaded automatically onto the Internet and can be accessed by water managers and the general public, for example via http://ca.water.usgs.gov/sanbern. Data are collected from each transducer every 15 minutes, and are transmitted via the satellite to the database every four hours. This easy access to real-time data from wells located three-dimensionally throughout the aquifer help enable water managers to make informed decisions regarding how much water to import from northern California, where to discharge imported water for artificial recharge, and how much and where to pump ground water for municipal supply.

Wesley R. Danskin, U.S. Geological Survey Mr. Danskin is a Research Hydrologist for the United States Geological Survey. He received a Bachelors Degree in Geology from Carleton College in Minnesota, and a Master’s Degree in Applied Hydrogeology from Stanford University. For the past nearly 30 years, Mr. Danskin has worked on applying ground-water optimization to study areas throughout the United States and most recently the Kingdom of Jordan. For the past 15 years, he has developed and taught optimization training courses and advised water-management projects.


2008 Ground Water Summit